You don't want people to think you're just writing stories for children about a pig in a tutu.

It remains unbelievable to me that I have any readers beyond my own blood relations - it's a crazy, wild gift.

When you're a kid, it's hard to tell the innocuous secrets from the ones that will kill you if you keep them.

My backyard was replete with madness, it just grew indigenously in South Florida.

The folks I read as a kid really set me up. I owe a huge debt to Ray Bradbury and Madeleine L'Engle.

No, I don’t have to tell a soul about this, I promised myself. When you are a kid, you don’t know yet that a secret, like an animal, can evolve. Like an animal, a secret can develop a self-preserving intelligence. Shaglike, mute and thick, a knowledge with a fur: your secret.

In short stories there's more permission to be elliptical. You can have image-logic, or it's almost like a poem in that you can come to a lot of meanings within a short space.